Electro-acoustic

Jeremy dePrisco grew up listening to Echoes and Hearts of Space and the signals beaming from his father’s attic Ham Radio workbench. After being a closet sound experimentalist for 15+ years, Jeremy embraced his electro side and love of audio manipulation via the Shivasongster moniker in 2010. Since then, Jeremy has been attending electronic music events and collaborating with other electro artists.

For a time, his monthly electro-music.com radio program, Signals with Shivasongster, explored improvised and generative electronic music, and composed pieces that ranged from conventional guitar pieces to works written for alternative controllers, field recordings and found sounds. Shivasongster has allowed Jeremy to bring his “after midnight” studio experiments to the stage, such as an evening of “Far Out Space Music” with Explorophonic, a Central PA experimental music group and subsequent electro-music.com festivals.

In 2012 Jeremy founded the Central PA Electro/Synthesizer meetup in 2012, which later became the Susquehanna Experimental Music & Sound meetup until 2016 when it was closed to pursue other projects. During the meetup’s four year span, the small group presented workshops, demos, jams, demos, concerts and social gatherings for sound artists interested in building a local community focused on experimental music (some picts below).

Much of Jeremy’s work draws on Soto Zen Buddhist dharma teachings, political speeches, NPR radio interviews and his own private collection of found sounds and hacked devices. Jeremy also now builds many of the devices he uses in performance and recording. Other interests of the years have included Percussa AudioCubes, an infrared controller that adds visual interest to otherwise static-looking computer music (but carried a heavy cognitive overload that detracted from performance enjoyment). Using rigs composed of both computer-based tools and rigs without laptops, these days Jeremy is more often seen with a combination of non-computer tools ranging from piezo devices to effect pedals.

In June 2015, Jeremy performed his piece “Sunspot Cycle” with visuals by Michael O’Bannon at the Kutztown University Computer Music & Visualization Conference at the Kutztown University Planetarium. You can listen to studio demos here, and see pictures of the event on Flickr.

From 2010-2016, Jeremy performed at the Electro-Music Festival in Huguenot, NY

Performances at the EM festival ranged from solo guitar/effects and vocal pieces to laptop constructions using Ableton Live and Reason, with the addition of controllers such as Percussa AudioCubes. In 2016 Jeremy presented his piece, “Sonic Conspiracy Theories: 528 vs 741 Hz,” derived from a popular late night radio interview program. In the studio, Jeremy added sonic manipulations from a variety of instruments including Pittsburgh Modular System 10.1, Meeblip Anode, Arturia Microbrute, Korg SQ-1, EHX pedals, StepPolyArp for iPad and other devices. The piece evolved more in 2017 with improvised sonics, and continues to evolve.